The Halcrow House on Highway 6 Manitoulin Island, on the hill above our house.The degree work I am doing this winter has to do with creating site specific installations. We are asked to choose two sites, and ensure that the body of work we make fits well into both of them. That it does not impose on, but rather exposes the site. I've chosen the Sudbury art gallery and the Halcrow House as my two sites. Why? They are both pioneer houses built on hills looking over water is one reason maybe. That I'm interested in the house as metaphor is another, maybe.
The Bell Mansion, Art Gallery of Sudbury I think about the women who have lived in these houses and what they saw as they looked out over the water, how they managed their days. You can see a painting I made of the Halcrow house by clicking here.
6 comments:
oh, please say that old house in on a heritage list and is being looked after! We have one on our block that is being ignored by the owner--there's grass growing up through the kitchen floor and it's sliding sideways....
No, it is not being looked after at all. It is falling down and is in much worse state now than it was 17 years ago when I first fell in love.
I'll look into seeing about heritage lists - that is such a good idea. This house is typical of the pioneer houses on the Manitoulin - made from cement.
a lonely, wonderful old structure... huge against the sky. i like your sky, especially.
I love the painting you made of The Halcrow House. I too often think of the people who have inhabited houses of long ago.
I love your painting, such beautiful movement and colour, like a dream, I think.
I, too, have a keen sense of (read: love of) place. It resonates deeply with my bones. (Probably because my bones are the source of my wisdom, the part of me that connects with Ancestors.) In grad school, two fellow students came down for a long study weekend. As I drove us through the backroads to Georgia's (we lived there then) state environmental center who'd agreed to give us the keys to the place on their day off because one friend from Holland was starting an environmental center as her thesis project), I looked out at the rows of cookie cutter houses sitting way out in the open, lined up one right beside the other, and I said aloud, "I'd like to go knock at each door, and ask the woman who answered it 'Are you living the life you imagined? The life you once wanted? If not, what are you going to do about it?'" The car got completely quiet, a deep silence as is known to descend and envelope when something deep has been tapped. The other friend (the one who loved people more than the Earth), wrote it down for me, and we've never forgotten it. I don't know what it will lead to, but one day . . .
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